Facetiousness aside, I'm flabbergasted that I'm reading people on HN defend these kinds of abhorrent data collection and retention polices and using the difficulties of coordinating 18 people as an excuse for them.
It's like some cyber stockholm syndrome where people feel the need to make justifications for the behaviour of malevolent entities that they have wilfully shared their data with. The requests are so unbelievably intrusive that they remind me of the Ivy League nude posture photos[1]
I give it 6-24 months before we're reading a story here about a mass data leak from Little League or something equivalent like Boy Scouts of America or whatever.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League_nude_posture_photos
You asked specifically for little leagues. The across continents coordination is done by a.) delegating rulership to local warlords b.) keeping military power strong enough to keep those you those in check. It had massive limitation in terms of what it could achieve and has zero to do with organizing of competitions for kids.
Plus, the central power would not bother to micromanage little teams. It is our culture that finds little leagues important, not theirs.
However, the comment I was responding to was regarding the need to have any coordination at all. It’s good and right that these organizations exist, they just don’t need to collect PII as described in the article.